Caged Love
by Pineapple1
Summary: Mal puts it all on the line for Simon...


**Uploaded on the behalf of a friend who is waiting for their account to go live in a couple of days.**

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Shirtless and sweating, bent double and sucking air into his lungs, Mal knew he'd given all he had, and come up short.

He was done. He had nothing left to give.

Every square inch of his skin was screaming in pain. If only he could get out somehow.

But the captain knew there was no escape. There was only one way he could get out of this one, and that was to win.

His mind drifted, looking forward to being back on the ship with Simon patching him up. The good doctor's hands, strong but gentle, massaging and caressing his b-

*BASH*

Another crashing right hand smashed into Mal's left cheek, sending him staggering to his side.

Mal shook his head, cleared his mind, focused on the fight.

*SMACK*

A quick punch rocked him backwards, his arms flying out to his sides to steady himself, his broad back feeling the cool chill of the chain-link cage wall.

The brute before him was on him in seconds, fists and knees slamming into his stomach time and time again.

Mal's body was giving up on him. His eyes were closing up. Darkness was starting to overcome him. A strange, soothing warmth was enveloping him. It would be so easy to just give up.

Time slowed down. A deep, rumbling cough started in his chest and seemed to take an age to rise through his body, up his throat, and come spluttering through his bloodied lips.

The man before him, seven foot at the least, broad, so impossibly broad, drew back his fist.

It was coming, the end was coming. It was all Mal could do to stay on his feet to take it like a man.

But then he saw him, just past the drawn fist.

Pushing his way through the crowd, fighting to clear a path for himself amongst the baying fans, there he was.

Simon reached the cage wall, pushed his fingers through the gaps in the chain-link.

Good, he'd made it. They hadn't caught him. Maybe he'd got the meds to River in time, otherwise all of this was for nothing.

Mal looked into Simon's bright, shining eyes, noted his firm, set jaw. He drew strength from him.

He saw the doctor's wide, soft lips, his quivering finger tips. He summoned strength for him.

The fist was coming now, still in eerie slow motion. The world had become sluggish but his mind had not.

He watched the fist coming towards his face, knew that timing was crucial.

The fist drew closer, Simon's eyes grew wider, Mal's senses were sharper than ever.

At the last instant he dropped into a crouch, the fist sailing over his head and crashing into the cage wall, shaking it violently.

Simon was hidden from view now by the bulky foe before Mal, and time resumed its traditional pace.

Mal had to be fast now, had to take his chance.

Thrusting upwards with all his strength, his fist clenched above his head like Superman taking flight, he drove his bony knuckles into the jaw of the man in front of and above him, knocking his head back and sending him flying.

The man staggered and fell, collapsing onto the cold metal floor spread-eagled.

Mal was over him an instant later, his fists clenched, his teeth gritted, his vision a field of red. He was ready to end the fight then and there, once and for all.

The man beneath him was unconscious, beaten. Mal didn't need to do any more, but he wanted to.

He wanted to avenge the hundred blows he had received, the cuts and bruises which covered his body, the ache in every muscle.

He wanted to take the pain and the fire within him and put it into another man, to make him feel what he had felt.

But he didn't need to do any more. He had won. This was enough. He turned and began to walk away.

"Two men enter, only one man leaves. Those are the rules, thief."

Mal stopped, looked around for who had challenged him.

It was a man, vaguely familiar, grotesquely fat, sat lounged in a throne surrounded by slaves and catamites. He had seen his type before.

"You come into our town, you plunder our supplies, and you think you can leave with this final insult?"

"He's down," Mal replied, continuing to walk away. "He's already beaten."

"Then kill him, thief."

Mal stopped again. "Don't call me a thief. Those supplies were paid for fair. Now–"

"Fair?!" The fat man laughed at him. His entourage laughed. The whole crowd, nervously, began to laugh. "Fair?! You think you can come to lecture us about 'fair'?"

"He named his price," Mal retorted, bending down to pick up his torn shirt and brown coat from the corner of the cage, "and we paid it."

"He changed it!"

"Well he had no right to be doing that. We needed those meds and we paid for them, and you demanded this fight and I thought it, now me and my crew will be on our way, and I'd thank you for no more trouble."

"If you want your friends released, thief, I suggest you finish the fight."

They had his crew. They must have found them. Had they noticed Simon?

The fat man shouted down again, with a tone of cruel finality.

"It's finished when the crowd say it's finished, and this crowd want blood!"

The crowd roared, a hearty, deep-throated roar, full of rage and blood-lust.

They were hungry, seething, violent, desperate, and they were many.

He couldn't fight his way out, not if he wanted to keep Simon safe as he did so. He hoped Simon realised he was doing all this for him, had got his crew into this mess for him and his sister.

He looked up at the fat, sweaty man in his throne. He looked down at the broken man in the middle of the ring, no threat to him anymore.

He looked into Simon's eyes.


End file.
